Irving v. Lipstadt

Transcripts

This new and very damaging ban on visiting 1personal expense I appealed to the Australian Federal 2Court. The Court declared the Minister's refusal of a 3visa illegal. The government in Canberra therefore 4changed the law in February 1994 to keep me out. We note 5from Professor Lipstadt's own discovery that the 6immigration minister faxed the decision to keep me out 7direct to one of her source agencies that same afternoon. 8The same kind of thing happened. 9 In July 1994, as the resulting fresh legal 10actions which I started against the Australian government 11still raged, the Second Defendant was invited by 12Australian organisations, all expenses paid to visit their 13country; she was hired to tour Australia, and to slander 14my name and my reputation and add her voice to the 15campaign to have me refused entry. The court, my Lord, 16you will probably remember the Australian TV video which 17I showed entitled "The Big Lie" in the early days. 18MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. 19MR IRVING: Broadcast in July 1994, it showed both the expert 20witness, Professor van Pelt, and Mr Fred Leuchter. It 21showed Fred Leuchter standing on the roof of crematorium 22No. II, about which we are going to hear more, crematorium 23No. II at Auschwitz which van Pelt declared to be the 24centre of the Nazi genocide, and the Second Defendant 25being interviewed while still in Australia (and refusing 26once again to debate with the revisionists, just as she

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1has obstinately refused to go into the witness stand here 2and be questioned). Thus I found myself excluded from 3Australia. We have had now Germany, Canada, South Africa, 4Australia, New Zealand as well, I lost the ability to 5visit my hundreds of friends down under and my own 6daughter too, who is an Australian citizen; and I lost all 7the bookshop sales that this ban implied in Australia - 8where my Churchill biography had hit the No. 1 spot in the 9best seller lists earlier. 10 Over the page: My lecturing engagements in the 11British Isles came under similar attack. I had often 12spoken to universities and debating societies, including 13the Oxford and Cambridge Unions, in the past, but now in 14one month, in October 1993, when I was invited to speak to 15prestigious bodes at three major Irish universities, I 16found all three invitations cancelled under pressure and 17threat of local Jewish and anti-fascist organisations. 18The irony will not elude the court that these Defendants, 19on the one hand, have claimed by way of defence that 20I speak only to the far right and neo-Nazi element, as 21they describe it, and yet it turns out that their own 22associates are the people who have done their damnedest to 23make it impossible for many others to invite me. 24 The Second Defendant, Deborah Lipstadt, had 25meanwhile made progress with her book. She told her 26publisher that she had written a certain statement with

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1the marketing people in mind. In other words, sometimes 2money mattered more than content, in my submission. 3 She had revealed in September 1991 in a letter: 4"I have also spoken to people in England who have a large 5cache of material on David Irving's conversion to denial". 6We do not know who the people are, but we can, of course, 7readily suspect who in this case those people were. She 8is once again not presenting herself for 9cross-examination, so there are many things we cannot ask 10her about, including and I would have asked her, in fact, 11most tactfully the reasons why she was refused tenure at 12the University of California and moved downstream to the 13lesser university, in my submission, in Atlanta where she 14now teaches religion. 15 In the light of Mr Rampton's strictures on my 16now famous little ditty -- your Lordship will remember the 17little ditty which I am supposed to have hummed to my nine 18month old daughter, the racist ditty, which went around 19the press because Mr Rampton issued a press release -- 20supposedly urging my nine month old little girl not to 21marry outside her own people, I should also have wanted to 22ask questions of Professor Lipstadt's views on race had 23she gone into the witness box. We know that she has 24written papers, and delivered many fervent lectures, on 25the vital importance of people marrying only within their 26own race. Quotation: ("We know what we fight

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1against...", she wrote, "intermarriage and Israel-bashing, 2but what is it we fight for?") She has attracted, in 3fact, much criticism from many in her own community for 4her implacable stance against mixed marriages, marrying 5outside their own race. In one book Professor Lipstad 6quotes a Wall Street Journal interview with a Conservative 7rabbi, Jack Moline, whom she called "very brave" for 8listing 10 things that Jewish parents should say to their 9children: "No. 1 on his list", she wrote (in fact it was 10No. 3) "was 'I expect you to marry Jews'." She considered 11that to be very brave. My one little ditty which I hummed 12to my nine month old daughter, Jessica, was a perhaps 13tasteless joke. Professor Lipstadt's repeated 14denunciation of mixed marriages addressed to adults was 15deadly serious. 16 Professor Lipstad accuses me of error or 17falsification, but is apparently unable to spot a fake 18even at a relatively close range. She admitted (in a 19recent interview with Forward) that she used memoirs of 20the spurious Auschwitz survivor Benjamin Wilkomirski in 21her teaching of the Holocaust to her defenceless students, 22according to Professor Peter Novick who has written a book 23on this. Those "memoirs" have now been exposed, 24worldwide, as fraudulent. Wilkomirski was never anywhere 25near Auschwitz. In fact, he was in Switzerland. When it 26turned out that Wilkomirski have never been near the camp

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1or in Poland for that matter, but had spent the war years 2in comfort living with his adopted Swiss family, she 3acknowledged that this "might complicate matters 4somewhat", but she insisted that the Wilkomirski "memoirs" 5would still be "powerful" as a novel. It may seem unjust 6to your Lordship that it is I who have had to answer this 7person's allegation that I distort and manipulate 8historical sources. 9 We have Professor Lipstadt's handwritten notes, 10however, in the rather meagre discovery, evidently 11prepared for a talk delivered to the Anti-Defamation 12League in Palm Beach, Florida, in early 1994, which again 13is meagre but substantive evidence of her connection with 14the Anti-Defamation League. In these, if I read her 15handwriting correctly - and she appears to be relying on 16something Lord Bullock had just said - she states that my 17aim seems to be to de-demonize Hitler; and that I had said 18that Roosevelt, Hitler and Churchill were all equally 19criminal. This is hardly "exonerating" any of them. 20Summarising Hitler's War (the 1977 edition) she calls me 21merely an "historian with a revisionist bent" which is 22rather like AJP Taylor - and she adds, and this seems 23significant - "Irving denies that Hitler was responsible 24for the murder of European Jewry. Rather, he claims that 25Himmler was responsible. But he does not deny its 26occurrence. Had she stuck with that view, of course, of